* * *
In Eureka, California, just south of the Oregon border, we stayed in a host house with five guest bedrooms, enough for each of us to have a bed if we shared two to a bed. As luck would have it, Alyssa and I were assigned a queen-sized bed in one of these rooms.
After the race, the team went out for dinner. I spent the entire meal eagerly anticipating my evening with Alyssa, the first since our car date. But when we got back to the room, Alyssa, to my considerable disappointment, turned on the television to watch The Bachelor. We watched together and when it was over, she said good night and went to bed. I sat there, wanting to touch every part of Alyssa all night in lieu of sleep and she had her back to me. I thought about initiating conversation, but didn’t know what to say. I was mystified and confused.
I walked over to Danny’s room.
“Hey there vagina town,” he said. “I didn’t think I’d see you again tonight.”
“Hilarious,” I said, chuckling a little in spite of my mood.
“So how was it?” Danny pleaded, “You can tell me details. I won’t get grossed out.”
“There are no details, we watched The Bachelor and she went to bed.”
“What did she say?”
“Just that she was tired and going to bed. She didn’t say it apologetically either. It’s like she didn’t even notice that we were alone together for the first and probably last time during this race.”
“So, she’s tired,” Danny offered.
“Of course she’s tired. We’re all tired. What does that have to do with anything? There must be something else. She had enough energy to watch that show and trust me, that’s taxing.”
“What else could it be?” Danny asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “You massage her, did you notice anything?”
“Like a white spot of yeast infection discharge on my massage table sheet?” Danny responded innocently.
I cringed but smiled a little. It was pretty funny. “No.” I said. “I mean does she have any weird chafe marks or saddle sores she might not want me to see?”
“Nope,” he replied, “not that I saw.”
“I’m pissed,” I said.
“Pissed or frustrated?” Danny asked.
“Both, but mostly pissed at this point. I shaved my legs even though I didn’t have to for a few more days. I bought and applied really expensive good smelling lotion instead of just letting my dry skin flake off, and wore my best black lacy bra and underwear instead of sitting around in my comfortable pajamas.”
“So, are you still wearing all that?” Danny asked suggestively.
“I’m not saying that to be titillating. I’m venting. That underwear has never gone to the wash unnoticed or unappreciated. This would never happen with a guy.”
“No it wouldn’t. So are you reevaluating the whole lesbian thing?” Danny asked, clearly focusing on keeping his face and voice as neutral as possible.
“Not sure, but I’m reevaluating the whole Alyssa thing.”
“Really?” Danny asked.
“No. I wish. I’m still obsessed with her. I just don’t get it. She seemed completely uninterested in me.”
“How is it that you’re interested in someone who watches The Bachelor?” Danny asked.
“I don’t know. That and the reincarnated conquistador thing really should have cured me of my crush.”
“Just get some sleep,” Danny suggested, trying to sound supportive though I think he was enjoying my misery. “You have some big stages coming up.”
I went back to the room and lay next to Alyssa, wanting to press my body against hers as she slept. I wanted unlimited access to her body and I wanted it immediately. Instead of sleeping, I stared at the ceiling and thought of every excuse in the book for her to deny me. The obvious fear was that it was because I sucked in bed. However, I knew she came last time and she should cut me some slack since it was my first crack at it and we were in a car. She could also just be uninterested in me, but I pushed that thought away because I thought I might cry like a little girl. I thought up other excuses, ones that didn’t involve me. Maybe she was tired. After all, she was a sprinter not a mountain climber, so these climbing days were harder for her even though she was going slower than me. Or, I thought, she could be jealous because I was doing so well. Or, maybe she doesn’t feel comfortable having sex in a stranger’s house. Or she could be having her period. After creating all of these excuses, I finally fell asleep knowing that something wasn’t right. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. I slept lightly, afraid I might accidentally snuggle with her in my sleep.
The following day was another steep mountain stage. Though I’d slept poorly, I had a good day and placed fifth. Consequently, I entered the second and final time trial, a twenty-five mile course through Eugene, Oregon, in fourth place overall. It was beyond my wildest dreams, but instead of being content, I wanted to move up, onto the podium.
Eugene is home to the University of Oregon and the time trial course was lined with students drinking beer and cheering us on, cameras ready to catch any crashes for YouTube. Unfortunately for the students, crashes were rare in the solitary time trial. I placed fifth, my highest placing against the clock thus far. I attributed my improvement to better recuperation after the long mountain stages than the time trial specialists that had beaten me earlier, before we had more than a thousand miles in our legs. The time trial result moved me up to third place overall. I was ecstatic at the prospect of entering the second rest day in a podium position, with only six days left of racing.
That evening, I couldn’t take it anymore. I waited until Alyssa was alone on the couch she would be sleeping on and asked her what was wrong.
“Nothing,” she said. “What do you mean?”
“Well, we missed an excellent opportunity for sex last night and you’ve seemed distant since then. Is it something I said or did?” I asked.
“No,” she said.
“Nothing?” I asked again, and again.
“Well,” she said, her resolve softening. “I’ll tell you if you promise not to tell anyone.”
“Okay,” I said, more than curious.
“I have herpes,” she said.
“What?” I couldn’t disguise the disgusted look on my face.
“I’ve never given it to anyone to my knowledge so I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about. I’ve never even had it really, I just know I’m a carrier.”
I knew this game. She was telling me she had herpes so she could get rid of me without hurting me. In high school, it was my strategy for getting rid of guys guilt free, though I never made up an STD. I didn’t want that answer from Alyssa, I wanted the real reason she’d lost interest in me. I wanted to know so that I could fix it and make her like me again. “Well, it was sweet of you not to infect me last night, but you could have already infected me last week so I don’t buy it.”
“I’m sure I didn’t. It’s never flared up.”
“So, you don’t think it’s contagious, but even if it is, you may have already infected me. I don’t think that’s the problem. What’s the real reason you didn’t sleep with me last night?” I asked, even though I knew how annoying it was to be in her situation.
She stared at me uncomfortably, “I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s wrong. I just, I don’t know, I hit a wall with you.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked. My heart was beating quickly and my mouth tasted like bile.
“Nothing, I still really like you and want to hang out, but I hit a wall and I need to figure stuff out.”
I stared at Alyssa. She was barefoot and wearing jeans and somehow made it look sophisticated. This made me realize that I was sitting cross-legged like an elementary school student next to her. I unfolded my legs and crossed them, then leaned back into the couch. Alyssa was looking down and fidgeting with the remote but not touching any buttons. I had no fucking idea what she was talking about. And I was livid that she’d either exposed
me to herpes or didn’t have herpes and just brought it up to get rid of me. With that, I walked away.
I sat outside the massage room, waiting to be the next customer. When I got in, I told Danny what Alyssa said.
“Don’t worry about herpes,” he said, “It’s a cold sore, you’ll live. It will be good for you, you’ll be ugly briefly and see how the other half lives. What the hell is a wall?” Danny asked.
“A crappy metaphor for I’m not into you,” I replied.
“Did she give any other reasons besides the wall?” Danny asked.
“Other than herpes? No.” I said.
“Are you sure you didn’t do something to her? Say something mean?”
I thought about it and said, “Normally that would be a valid concern, but no Danny, I don’t think so. I’ve never been so nice. For God’s sake, I watched The Bachelor with her. If I did anything to her it was being too pathetic.”
“That could be it, no one likes a pathetic person.”
“Could be, but she likes the show, along with most of America, so she probably doesn’t realize how much I sold out by watching it.”
“It’s been a long two weeks,” Danny said, “Maybe she’s just tired. After tomorrow’s rest day, she’ll come to her senses.”
“We’ll see,” I said, but I seriously doubted it.
* * *
The next day, the second rest day, Alyssa was gone when I woke up. A few hours later, she and two other teammates came into the house. They had taken my car to get coffee and hadn’t even invited me. They did the same thing a week ago, but I didn’t care then. Now, hate and jealousy rose up into my throat as we prepared to go for a two hour team ride to spin the legs out.
As we took off, I positioned myself next to Alyssa. The entire team was riding two abreast. Each pair would spend five minutes or so in the wind, then peel off and move to the back of the line. I rode next to Alyssa for fifteen minutes, wanting to say something, but not knowing what. Finally, it was our time to pull into the wind.
The pace for the previous fifteen minutes had been twenty-two miles per hour. When Alyssa and I took over, I half-wheeled her. Half-wheeling is when you’re riding next to someone at a conversational pace and you lift the pace by a half a wheel length or so, upping the ante slightly. The message is, “My easy conversational pace is faster than your easy conversational pace.” Alyssa responded by meeting my half wheel and raising me a half wheel a few seconds later. Neither of us got out of the saddle or made an obvious effort while raising the pace; the idea was to make the lift appear unconscious, that it’s so easy you don’t even notice you’re doing it. I reciprocated, bringing the pace to twenty-four miles per hour.
Twenty-four miles per hour is still a conversational pace, but not effortless. Alyssa half-wheeled me again and I reciprocated until we were up to twenty-six miles per hour, doable, but no longer conversational. I can hold twenty-six for a while, but hadn’t planned to do so today because I just wanted to spin out my legs easy. Alyssa upped the pace yet again and so did I. Then we did it again. We were now traveling thirty miles per hour, a pace neither of us could sustain very long. It was now a matter of who blinked. I would sooner slit my throat than ease up and lose, but it was becoming harder to appear at ease and I was supposed to be resting my legs. My breathing was getting louder by the second. I covered this by casually taking a sip of water, so Alyssa could see out of the corner of her eye that I was not in difficulty. That seemed to do the trick and she slowed down.
I won the meaningless half-wheel contest and felt good, briefly. I pretended not to notice that Alyssa failed to keep pace, and kept riding at thirty miles per hour for a few more seconds. Then I turned my head and pretended to notice, for the first time, that Alyssa was having difficulty with our little jaunty pace. When I looked back, she was already thirty yards behind me. Our teammates were nowhere to be seen. Obviously, they were content not to burn out their legs on their rest day, as even sitting in the draft at thirty miles per hour is an effort.
I turned around and rode back to the host house by myself. After a few turns, I realized I was lost. I sat at a red light, panicking that I’d spend the entire rest day lost, in the sun with no food or water. As I straddled my bike on the side of the road, a pickup truck pulled alongside me and turned on his windshield wipers, knocking wiper fluid into my face. He cracked up and peeled out. Asshole.
Two hours later, I finally found the host house. I grabbed Sonny, and went outside. The euphoria of my triumph at the “half-wheel” game was long gone. I sat outside and felt sorry for myself in the shade. Danny came out back and asked, “Did you eat lunch?”
“No,” I said. “I’m not hungry.”
“You need to eat,” he said.
“I will.”
“You need to snap out of this before you ruin your race. She’s not worth it. You’re acting like a girl.”
“I am a girl.”
“You’re acting like the type of girl you don’t like.”
“Yeah, I am pathetic,” I replied. “I just can’t stop thinking about her. I’m confused. I just want to know what happened.”
“Does it really matter? How many people have you dumped who had no clue why you dumped them?”
“All of them,” I said. “That doesn’t mean there wasn’t a reason. There’s a reason and I want to know what it is. She put opera on in the car when we drove back from hooking up and I changed the channel. Maybe she thinks I’m not cultured.”
“You’re not cultured,” Danny said helpfully.
“So, should I be dumped for that? Fuck culture. Who wants to hang out with someone cultured?”
“It’s possible that Alyssa does,” Danny replied. “Who cares what it is? It could be anything. Maybe it’s because you curse every other word, or because you’re a total slob.”
“I am not,” I insisted, though I knew he was right.
“Your car looks like you took a garbage can and dumped half of it in the front seat and half of it in the back.”
“True, but eight women are using that car right now. I doubt she realizes the car always looks like that. Plus, I’m not a total slob. My clothes are clean, I’m clean, my bike’s clean. Maybe it’s because I’m a music idiot.”
“This is a fun game,” Danny said. “I’m learning all of your insecurities. Why do you think it’s because you’re a music idiot?”
“Because she had a lady singing on her voice mail and it sounded so unpolished, I thought she sang into her voice mail because it sounded a little like her. She looked at me like I was an idiot and said, that’s so and so. Some lady I never heard of. From the context, I take it that it was someone famous, but I don’t know because I’m a loser and listen to Neil Diamond and Barry Manilow.”
Danny laughed hysterically and said, “Don’t forget Air Supply.”
“That’s not the worst of it. I tried to cover my mistake by saying, ‘I know that, I thought maybe it was you singing her song into your recorder.’”
“I think we’re getting closer to the problem, but does it really matter? What will you do when if you find out?”
“Depends,” I replied. “If it’s a valid reason, I’ll change. I’m all about self-improvement.”
“Right. You’ll change. You’ll be a neat, cultured music snob, then you and Alyssa will live happily ever after.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Part of me wants that. The other part of me just wants her to like me again so that I can then crush her soul.”
“That sounds healthy,” Danny said.
“That’s the way it is. I don’t even know if I’m thinking about her because I like her, or if I’m thinking of her because I’m competitive and don’t want to be rejected. Either way, I want her back.”
“You have to stop taking this personally,” Danny said as if getting dumped isn’t personal. “You’ll ruin your life like that guy who didn’t realize you dumped him for confusing the words advice and advise, in an email to you.”
“B
ut I didn’t do anything stupid like that,” I said.
“That music thing was pretty dumb if it’s really someone famous. But forget it, you read that sex advice columnist, Dan Savage, right?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Well, one time some guy wrote in and said he was weirded out because he caught his girlfriend having sex with her brother. Her excuse was that they started doing it as kids and never stopped as they entered adulthood. The guy wanted to know if he was being a jerk for judging her for fucking her brother when she was great in every other way. Dan’s advice was, dump the mother fucker. He then explained that the guy shouldn’t worry about it because there’s some other man out there who is going to think that’s the hottest thing in the world. Let her find that guy.”
“I’m confused,” I said. “Am I the judgmental boyfriend or the brother-fucker in your scenario?”
“Neither. The point is, whatever Alyssa doesn’t like in you, someone else will love. Meet that person.”
“I’ve met plenty of men that love my flaws and I’m sure there will be women, too. I don’t want them, and actually, I usually can’t stand them. I want Alyssa for some reason.”
“Then you’ll get her back.” Danny said, “You always get what you want. And, once you get her, you’ll realize you’re straight and not interested in her.”
I knew Danny was trying to help, but I was in no mood to hear how I always get what I want. I was also sick of him telling me I was straight. It was like Danny had no concept that I was going through a tough time because I was gay and heartbroken. I lashed out. “Do you know how I know I’m not straight? The thing that seals the deal?”
“How?” he asked.
“Because of you. You’re jealous of Alyssa and you’ve never been jealous of anyone before. And you’re jealous because you’re in love with me and always have been and now you know it’s not going to work because you know I’m gay even though you’re trying to convince me otherwise.”
Maternity Leave Page 29